“I mean it, bitch!”Blue Eyes screeched.“The next thing you’ll feel is my?—”
He didn’t finish.Regan prepared her body for the bullet but it never came.Throwing a look over her shoulder, she saw something that looked like a wolf but wasn’t—somethinghuge—thrash Blue Eyes’s limp body about on the ground, its powerful jaws clamped around the security guard’s blood-pissing throat.
Her blood ran cold.Jesus!What is that?
Feet stumbling, she fell to the ground, staring at the nightmarish sight as though hypnotized.God.What IS that?
“Over there!”
The furious shout snapped her out of her trance.Whipping her head around, she saw them.Five armed guards running towards her.
“Over there!Over there!”
She flung her stare back to the wolf, watched it raise its massive head from Blue Eyes’s mutilated throat to regard her.Their eyes connected for a brief moment before it threw its head back and howled.
“There!There!”The approaching guards screamed.“Shit!Get it!Get it!”
They changed course, running at the wolf—thebeast—instead.Guns raised and aimed.
Blood flicking from its muzzle, the animal swung its silver stare to her once more before it ran away.Disappearing around the corner of the building, the yelling, bellowing guards close on its tail.
Regan stared at the motionless body of Ol’ Blue Eyes—for exactly two seconds.Blood roaring in her ears, she scrambled to her feet and sprinted through the gate.Off Epoc Industries’s grounds.Into the darkness of the street.Heading for her waiting car.
She was speeding through the quiet streets of North Sydney before her heartbeat returned to normal.“Holy shit!”Long dark fingers of pre-dawn shadows reached out for her car as she turned the wheel and sped down a narrow lane.“Holy shit!”
Had the wolf done what she thought?Had it saved her?
Regan shook her head and tried to force some calm into her screaming muscles.Wolves were smart, possibly the most intelligent of the canine genus, butthatsmart?
Was it really a wolf, though?
The question flitted through her stunned mind and her heart started thumping again.
She had no answer.
Not without seeing the animal again.
Turning the wheel once more, she pulled into her short driveway.Killing the engine, she stared out the windscreen at the closed door of her garage.Everything in her studies told her what she’d seen was lunacy.Wolves did not grow that big.They did not exhibit self-sacrificing behavior,especiallynot to protect a human.She made her living working with animals.She was Sydney’s leading animal physiotherapist, damn it!Sheknewanimals.And what she saw tonightwasn’tnormal.
But youdidsee it.The wolfdiddraw the guards’ attention from you.Itdidsave you.Itdidstop Trev.
A shiver raced up Regan’s spine and her flesh broke out in goose bumps.Christ, what a fuckup.She pulled a deep breath and the cloying stench of Trev’s sweat assaulted her senses.Urgh, she needed a shower.
She climbed from the car and began to cross the small patch of lawn she proudly called her front yard.She needed a shower and sleep.She needed normalcy again.In only a few hours she had an appointment with the director of Taronga Zoo.Following that a physio session with the Prime Minister’s aging dachshund, after which came lunch with Rick at his…
A low and distant howl cut her thought dead.
A wolf’s howl.
Regan spun around, expecting to see the steel-grey wolf behind her, its muzzle dripping with blood, its silver eyes burning into her soul.
Nothing.
As if there would be!Get a grip!
She stood still, ears straining to hear…
Nothing except the gentle roar of Bondi Beach half a mile away and the soft warbles of a nearby magpie out searching for breakfast.
